The Avalanche is going to rue the day it passed on the chance to draft Seth Jones. I couldn't shake that feeling Sunday after attending the team's NHL draft watch gathering at Chopper's Sports Grill. Chopper Travaglini — the legendary former Nuggets trainer who died in 1999 — indirectly helped convince me. His picture hangs inside the restaurant named after him.

After the Avalanche claimed Halifax Mooseheads center Nathan MacKinnon with the first overall choice in Newark, N.J., I could see Chopper, gravelly voiced even when healthy, squinting and saying, as he often did, "Something here just doesn't feel right."

Something here just doesn't feel right.

For nearly a year, Jones — the American-born defenseman for major junior's Portland Winterhawks — was built up as the likely No. 1 overall choice in 2013. The comparisons flowed in, to Nick Lidstrom, to Chris Pronger, to more. Jones was poised beyond his years, he controlled games, he was an NHL great waiting to happen. And the kicker: He came with a great story that was tied to Denver and to both the Nuggets and Avalanche.

Sunday, the Avalanche fans at Chopper's seemed fine with the choice of MacKinnon. Joe Sakic's pre-emptive strikes involving the team's intentions in the past two weeks had prepared them.

Still, something here doesn't feel right.

And that big picture includes that Florida and Tampa Bay ultimately went along with the notion there were at least three forwards — MacKinnon, Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Drouin — who were wiser choices than Jones. Going fourth in the draft is no insult. In fact, it's a huge compliment.

But I still don't get it.

As a generalist not on the hockey beat any longer, I'm not going to pretend to have "scouted" these teen- agers beyond the casual glimpses of major-junior games and highlight packages.

Avalanche chief scout Rick Pracey, and the men whose judgments are being counted on to turn this franchise around, Sakic and Patrick Roy, have "sound" reasons for settling on selecting one of three forwards and then specifying it would be MacKinnon.

In Roy's case, as the coach of the Quebec Remparts, he marveled at the talents of MacKinnon and Drouin as Halifax linemates — and tried to figure out ways to contain them.

I've written many stories touching on a cliché that has the added benefit of being true — that even gifted defensemen, and big defensemen especially, generally take longer to develop than talented forwards. Neither Lidstrom nor Pronger were stars overnight, or even close to it. The less reasonable argument is that other defensemen taken high have been busts. And that never happens with forwards? Yet all of that seems to have entered into the Avalanche's thinking, as perhaps did these sudden whispers — which to me come off as lame last-second rationalizations — that would have you believe Jones wasn't sharp-edged or tough enough.

MacKinnon might turn out to be as great as another kid from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia — Sidney Crosby. With MacKinnon, Matt Duchene and Gabe Landeskog all coming out of the draft's top three overall picks since 2009, the potential for collective greatness there is undeniable. But it also makes it clear that Colorado, horrible on defense, in no way believes it is as well-stocked at center as previously advertised.

This makes me at least wonder if it now wishes it hadn't matched Calgary's offer sheet for Ryan O'Reilly, whose salary — while set by the Flames, not the Avalanche — is a benchmark in the extension discussions with Duchene, and will be with others. And, yes, Paul Stastny's solid overall play never has come close to justifying his $6.6 million annual salary in the deal that has one more season to run.

Jones would have struggled at times with Colorado in 2013-14, as he now will with the Nashville Predators, who claimed him with the fourth choice. But soon, and sooner than the Avalanche, Panthers and Lightning seemed to consider possible, he will be great.

Not all kids who play baseball are uniformed with fancy script across their chests, traveling to $1,000 instructional camps and drilled how to properly hit the cut-off man. Some kids just play to play.